Hundreds of Things: Volume One

“Hundreds of Things: Volume One is the newest show by Toronto artist Ken Nicol. It is his second solo show at MKG127. It includes works that Nicol has made or collected. There’s a hundred-pound steel sculpture. There’s a hundred plastic lids arranged in a grid. There’s a piece that’s comprised of a hundred white hairs that the artist plucked from his beard. It takes time to make things by the hundred or to make things that are made of hundreds of other things. It takes hundreds of hours. This description has a hundred words in it. No, now it does.”

K.Nicol’s work is marked by an obsession with collecting and turning everyday objects into artworks. His process is methodical, laborious and time consuming. He creates objects from start to finish by mundane repetition over countless hours. Murray Whyte, the Toronto Star‘s art writer picked Nicol‘s first solo exhibition A Room Full of Stuff I Made (And Collected) at MKG127 which took place during March & April, 2009 as one of the year’s top 5 exhibitions, the only one in a commercial gallery to make the list. Nicol studied at several institutions before giving up on any kind of diploma. He currently works in a studio in Toronto where he surrounds himself with old typewriters, clocks and broken things.